Mental Causation

Right. OK. This is the last lecture, as you're probably aware. So if you come next week, there won't be a lecture. And today we're going to be looking at mental causation. And I must say, this is such a huge subject that the thought of doing it in one week is really quite daunting. Poppy? Yes, I know too much about it. Which never helps when you're lecturing. So, anyway, we're going to be looking at mental causation and I'm going to be taking you through several really quite difficult arguments.

Okay, so the general public that's, you know, believes or tends to believe that the mind is the brain. And what that means is that mental states are brain states. But it's difficult to see how this is possible. And I'm going to show you why. It's difficult to see how this is possible. They have very different properties. And let's do this together rather than me. Do it on the board. Let's put the mental over here and the physical over here. And let's look at. Objects.

Properties. And relations in each case, so the physical objects would include things like pens, flip charts. Bodies, billiard balls. And lots of other physical objects you can think of. What about mental objects? What sort of things? I'm using the word object very widely. What sort of thing is mental? Ideas. Yeah. Okay. Dream. We can put dreams in dreams. It seems to me are combinations of objects. They're very complex objects that occur over time. But let's put them in. Okay. Sorry.

Intentions. Yep. Okay. Fierce, fierce, okay, or emotions more generally, so love, hate, etc, tend to be Penns, a mental. I have a concept of the O concept, certainly no relation, but pens are over here, but concepts are in there. Certainly, yep. Concepts are constituents of what perceptions are over here. Yeah. Okay. Concepts are not constituents and perceptions of what we sell. Yet they could do decisions. Yep. Okay. Nobody's mentioned beliefs, so I'm going to put it in there.

Okay. So so we've got thing this is a very different pens, flip charts, bodies, billiard balls, as opposed to fear, love, hatred, beliefs, ideas, objects. Sorry. Not objects, perceptions, decisions, concepts, etc. So very different sort of objects. And Descartes says that he starts off thinking these things are rather a female, whereas these things are pretty solid. I mean, they they take up space and so on. Let's have a look at the properties.

What sort of properties to physical objects have dimensions? Three dimensions. Four colours. Yeah. Mass. Okay. Size or mass. Extrinsic. Extrinsically to what? To the mind. Okay. When we're not going to look at that for a moment because. Okay. That, that would be relating the two which we're trying not to do at the moment. So any other properties that physical objects have. We've got colour mass continuity and time.

You mean. Okay. Duration continuity. Okay. That may be something that mental states have to stop mental states. Yeah. No, but but it's interesting that that's I mean, mental states don't have colour. Do they. I mean, even an experience of green is not itself green. And they don't have mass either, do they? So you don't have a belief that weighs two pounds or two ounces or something like that shape. OK. Physical limits. You mean shape. OK. Some physical objects have liquidity. Faisal.

Yes. Different phases. Well, why doesn't a belief have a mass? Yes. OK. Well, I'll tell you. Let's talk about what the properties of beliefs are. Before we look at why they don't have the same properties as physical sites, what sort of properties do fears, beliefs, concepts, etc have? So if we say a belief is so we can say a billiard ball is red, a billiard ball is round. If we say a belief is uncertainty, uncertainty. OK. Anything else? A belief is true.

True or false. Well, can I put that up here at the moment. Okay, sir. Sorry. Erroneous. Erroneous. So would that mean false? Yep. Yep. We've got false there. Motivational, certainly. Okay. We might have justified in here. What about experiences change? But. Mutable. Well, that's something, again, that seems to be in common, don't isn't it mutability because beliefs can change, but so can billiard balls or leaves or pens, et cetera.

Okay. What about relations? What sort of relations do physical things enter into? Spatial relations. So the pen is in Marianne's hands. Marianne is in front of the flip chart. Spatial relations. OK. Might that come on to spatial as well? Causal. Certainly. And that's possibly one that can be both. We'll have a look at that in a minute. Temporal certainty. So if we think of events rather than objects, they would tend to be they would be in time.

And again, that might be something that's that's common to both. OK. Anything else? Gravitational. OK. What about mental states? What sort of relations do they come in? Do they have spatial relations? Is one belief. Beside another or in front of another or on top of another. They. They can certainly conflict. How do beliefs conflict? Sorry. Okay. Contradiction. Can I say that contradiction and conflict are both rational relations.

So a belief can be rational support. Evidential support for another belief. A belief can contradict another belief. A belief can be consistent with another belief. A belief can be evident. Sorry. Entail another belief. And so on. Should value. And truth and falsehood we've got up here in properties. Not do not relations, but you might be right. They might be better in relations, in fact, truth, this is probably a relation between the mental and physical.

The point of all this is to we haven't ruled out the possibility that the mind is the brain. So Neurone 476 might be a true description of a belief. But we're going to leave that out at the moment because that's if if it is a true description, it's very much a theory that it is. But we know that beliefs have contents. They've got to have contacts. You can't have a belief that hasn't got a content, can you? A belief that isn't about anything.

Could you have such thing? So about snice or intentionality, as we call it. Do you have physical objects that have intentionality? I can think of two that you might think of. Physical objects that have about tennis or intentionality. Tendency. Words interesting, and it's certainly the case that sentences have about instantly a meaningful sentence is about something. But what makes it about something? The fact that it expresses a thought.

It's the thought that is about something. If a verb if a parrot utters the same sentence, it doesn't actually have any meaning, does it? Not in the same way anyway. If it has meaning, it has a type of meaning rather than the parrot doesn't mean anything by it. What is it? Alex, is it an interesting question? He never actually put together a grammatically any two words. Some many philosophers think that meaning does depend upon grammar.

That you've got to have a combinatorial grammar before you have meaning. So there was a chimpanzee that signed waterbird and people got all excited because they thought that it had seen a duck or something. But it was actually signing water and bird, not water bird, which would have been much more interesting. Okay. Um, the point of this is to point out how very different and there are things that they have in common.

I mean, time seems to be common, too. So both mental things and physical things have duration in time. But mental states don't have spatial dimensions, do they? They don't have mass. Who said that? Why don't beliefs have mass? Do you think you did? Is that because you believe that mental states are physical states?

Yes. Okay. Again, we're going back to the if we bring a theory in that mental states are physical states, then obviously everything with this this type of property sorry, things with this type of property have also got to have this type of property. So if mental states are physical states, there are physical states with contents. There are physical states that are about something. There are physical states that are true.

Notice that truth is a property of beliefs or the sentences that express beliefs. There's nothing else that's true or false. Lots of people want to disagree with me at that point. Do you? So my belief that the chair is blue is true. What makes it true is the chairs being blue. So there's a fact, which is the chairs being blue. That makes true my belief that the chair is blue. So the belief has a content. The chair is blue. It's made up of concepts.

And the concepts are made true by a state of affairs in the world, namely the chairs being blue. Okay. Do you see how very different mental states and physical states seem, at least initially? So if we're going to say that mental states are brain states, we've got to show two things. So mental states, the essential properties of the mental consistent either qualia or intentionality. So there are two types of mental state. Roughly qualitative states and propositional attitudes.

Qualitative states are things like experiences of red experiences and fear, experiences of happiness, that sort of thing. And all of them have a quality, a raw feel to them. If you've got toothache, you know, you've got toothache because it has a quality of hurting.

Or there are the propositional attitudes, the attitudes to propositions like beliefs, intentions, desires, all of which have contents or about a. So you can't have a belief that doesn't have a content that doesn't have intentionality. So two types of mental states, the qualitative states, the essential properties of which are qualia and the propositional attitudes. The essential properties of which are intentionality.

And it's their intentionality that enables them to be true or false and enables them to be justified, enables the mind to enter into rational relations. Notice that physical states don't enter into rational relations. If we think they do, it's probably because there are rational relations between the beliefs we have about these physical states. The physical states themselves do not justify anything or entail anything.

And physical states, their essential properties of the physical, consistent, intense extension charity. So space filling this three dimensionality. So you'll find all of this in Descartes. He's the you'll find all the references, as usual on the handout. But it was Descartes who looked at the real differences between the mental and the physical, and he thought that they couldn't possibly be the same thing.

I mean, if you think about an object, you've got to be thinking about something three dimensional. According to Descartes. Okay. So they look very different. But we've got a dilemma. So states are not mental unless they have either qualia or content. And physical states have neither qualia nor content. At least they don't have it necessarily. Perhaps they do have it. That's something that we're going to look at later. But they don't have it necessarily.

And states are not physical unless they have extension space filling this three dimensionality and mental states don't seem to have extension. Certainly they don't have it necessarily. We don't think of a belief as occupying space unless we're assuming that beliefs are physical states. So the question is, how can states with such very different properties be identical? B states of the very same kind. But if mental states are not physical states, the problem of mental causation arises.

If you think mental states are physical states, you haven't got any problem with mental causation because they've got the same properties and physical states can cause physical state. SIRF mental states are physical states. There isn't any problem with mental causation. The problem with mental causation arises only if you can't show that physical states are mental state. So if mental states and physical states are quite different, then the question comes in.

How can they causally interact? OK. In the 40s and 50s and in the handout, you get all the references, of course, in the 40s and 50s. Many philosophers thought that mental states were contingently identical to physical states. So they thought that pain states, for example, were contingently identical to see fibre firings. That's because empirical studies showed that when humans were in pain, they see fibres fired.

Okay. But they can't be necessarily identical. People thought because dogs don't have sea fibres. Actually, I have no idea where the dogs F.C. fibres, but say they don't Martiens don't see fibres. But surely dogs can be in pain. So if we say that pain is C fibre firing, it can't be a necessary question. That claim, because that would be tantamount to saying dogs can't have pain. And that's ridiculous. And we also want to allow that Martiens have pain, et cetera.

So that's all right. So says everyone, mental states or any contingently identical to see fibres firing. So human pains are contingently identical C fibres firing. End of problem. But then Krip Key came along. This is Krip Key. My favourite photograph of him and Krip Key in the 70s. He showed us that if mental states are identical to physical states, then they're necessarily identical to physical states.

And we've already looked at this when we looked at real essence in week four, I think it was we looked at this sort of argument. The thought was if science shows that water is H2O, then what it's showing is that water isn't necessarily H2O. This isn't a posteriorly. Right. Nessus necessity. It's not a contingent necessity. So if we're going to say that Paines are five or firing, we've got to say that Paines unnecessarily C fibre's firing.

And if dogs don't have C fibres, then dogs don't have pain. And if Martiens don't have C fibres, Martian's don't have pain. And this is so counterintuitive. That will turn round and say, well, actually, in that case, it can't be an identity. So it may be that science shows us that there's a correlation between C fibre firing and pain in humans. But that correlation is evidence of some other relation.

It's not the identity relation. Okay, so correlation could be evidence for all sorts of different relations, not just identity. OK. In the 50s and 60s, others thought that reasons couldn't be causes. And that's because reasons are beliefs and desires are linked logically to their behavioural effects.

So if we see say that Fred is crossing the road because he wants an ice cream and believes that there's an ice cream van over the road from which he can buy an ice cream and that he's got, you've got to fill in all the other beliefs like he believes he's got money in his pocket, maybe falsely. He believes that he can walk across the road. In the end, what you get is is a set of beliefs that entail the action.

They're logically linked to the action. They're rationally linked to the action, not just causally. And this is an interesting question in the mind, or at least with when you're looking at intentional states and the proper relations between them are rational. When there are causal relations between beliefs, it tends to be an error. So if your orders are that your son isn't dead, causes you to believe that your son isn't dead, that's a case of wishful thinking.

It's a causal relation between a desire and a belief. And when that happens, there's usually something wrong. What we want is our beliefs to enter into rational relations. So one belief is evidence for another. One belief implies another, one belief entails another and so on. And anyway, Hume told us, didn't he? That they can't be logical relations between cause and effect. And if they're all logical relations between reasons and behaviour, then they can't be cause and effect.

At least so many people thought. But then Davidson came along and again, we've already seen what Davidson had to say about this. He believed that he distinguish between causation and explanation and showed us that reasons could be causes despite being logically related to their effects. So, for example, says Davidson, you can say the cause of G caused G. And that's not an explanation. It's deeply uninformative. The cause of G caused G. But it doesn't mean it isn't true.

It's a lousy explanation, but it's still a causal statement. That's true. And what he showed us was that. Every event, two events. So that's the cause and that's the effect, and every event can be described in lots of different ways. So let's call this one. Call this one. It's Marianne's writing. On the flip chart. And it's happened at. To 20 to 25. Bloody hell. How did that happen?

It is hurried and so there are lots of different descriptions of that very event and there are lots of different descriptions of this event, too. This is David suddenly seeing. The point or something like that. This happened at two twenty six. This happened. OK. David was the subject of this, not Marianne. And so. And as Davidson says, actually, you've got to pick out a particular one of these and a particular one of these.

And if that causes that, then that's going to be a true causal statement, whichever of these descriptions you pick out and whichever of these descriptions you pick out. Do you see what I mean? So forget this. Think of this is the event described on page three of the times. And this is the houses falling down, the house falling down. Okay. So the event it's a true statement to say the events that is described on page three of the times caused the House to fall down.

But it's a lousy explanation. It doesn't tell us anything. It's only when you know that the events that is described on page three of the times is the earthquake that happened in Mexico, because both of them are descriptions of the same event that you get an explanation. So you can have a true causal statement and a lousy explanation. But it's a good explanation only if it makes it intelligible, if it picks out descriptions that are intelligible to us. And also has a true causal relation.

So if you have the earthquake that happened in Mexico and the house calls the house to fall down. That's a good explanation, but only if it's a true causal statement as well. OK. So that distinction between causation and explanation that I've appealed to in lecture three, I think very important thing to find. And we found it when we were thinking about mental causation. Okay. I think let me just see what I'm going to. OK, let's let's go to new questions about that.

David? There are mental causes, physical causes over determination. Well, we're going to get onto that. Yeah, yeah. Any other questions about what I've said so far, not about what's going to happen in the future, you think? Just clarify. When we say mental states, are there mental states plus states or I mean doing mental processes, including mental processes. So a mental process would be a process of reasoning from belief to belief.

So you with the process, you've got the relation as well as the states goes into education, which makes perfect sense to talk about the location processes. But anyway, what? Why? Because in the brain, they had to go away. That's if if beliefs are in the head. Okay. We're going to look about that that in a minute. Coming on from the first question first, which follows it. Do we automatically assume that we have data, epistemic access to mental states?

Because that's not a question I've looked at and I'm not going to look at it just now. No abuse to suggest no. Hence the need for that. Well, we all know that there are unconscious mental states. That's why I don't think we need to address that at the moment. Let's think mainly about states to which we do have conscious access. Don't at all that we do not. Well, that's not a question about what I've talked about. So. So if you don't mind, we'll leave it till the end, if that's all right.

No, we have experiences as of green. So I'm having experience as a blue at the moment. When I look at these chairs. But my experience isn't blue. OK. There's a certain quality to my experience, just as there's a certain quality to David's experience. I have no idea whether the quality of David's experience is anything like the quality of mine. Seems highly likely. It is. But I don't know and I never will know whether it is or not. I was. Blueness, this physical.

You have a situation of altering the lights. Right. I'm not saying blueness is physical. I'm saying that objects are blue. Experiences are as of. Blue. Rather than themselves blue. We do not say I have a blue experience, do we? These are not metaphorically unless we're talking metaphorically. I am feeling blue. Okay. I wanted questions actually on what I'd gone for. I'm very happy to take questions that go wider later on.

But let let's stick to what we're talking about. Just that this moment is this thing. So this idea of belief can cause a. Can be either a logical thing or an actual causal thing, is that right? If I believe, for instance, that. But my train goes at for 40. That will cause me to get to the station by 4:00. Well, it's a reason for you to get to the station by 4:00. There is 30. And I didn't really understand. I would note might think my belief that the train goes at 440 would.

It would make me think, oh, I'll go to the get to the station at five o'clock. It'll be all right. So that the belief would have caused another belief. Stupidly. Well, you can't be irrational unless you're rational. I mean, that chair is non rational. Okay, your rational is stupid. And because you can reason. Well, because you can reason. You can reason either well or badly. In this case, you've reasoned very badly.

I think in that case, my first belief be a normal, rational cause, rather in the sense that an earthquake causes a house to fall down. My belief. Caused me to believe something. Well, we're going to talk about where the reasons are causes. Davidson says that there's no reason to think that reasons aren't causes. When we pick out something as a reason, it's got to make the effect intelligible.

And as long as it does that, it's a good explanation, but it's only a good explanation if it's a true causal statement. So he's shown that reasons are indeed causes. So there's no problem with what you're saying at all. But there are bad reasons and good reasons. And both can be causes. Okay. Reason, says Davidson, all causes. And that's because reason explanations are a species of causal explanation. So all causal explanations cite something about the causal history of an event.

So if that's the event, we can cite anything about the causal history of this event. And it's a causal explanation, but a reason explanation is a certain type of explanation of an effect. And it's an explanation in terms of reasons. So ordinary causal explanations make sense of an event as one that fits with our picture of nature as uniform. So when you say that the event the house is falling down was caused by the events then described on page three of the times.

That's not a good explanation, is it? It may be a true causal statement, but it's not a good explanation. When you know that the event described on page three of the times was the earthquake, what you've got is the earthquake caused the house to fall down, which is both a true causal statement and a good explanation. And the reason it's a good explanation is that we know earthquakes are the sort of things that make houses fall down.

They're the sort of events that's correlated with the collapse of houses. So they fit that. That explanation fits with our picture of nature as uniform. But when we have a reasoned explanation, it makes sense of behaviour as one that fits with our picture of the agent as rational. So when I explain Bob's behaviour. OK. Bob is crossing the road because he wants an ice cream. Why do I think that?

Because he said a minute ago that he was feeling hot and he's there's an ice cream van just over the road. He's walking towards it. So I think my my hypothesis is that Bob's trying to cross the road because he wants an ice cream. If he then walks straight past the ice cream van and goes into a coffee shop. My explanation fails, doesn't it? He wouldn't have been rational to walk past the ice cream button if that's why he was crossing the road.

So the idea of reasoned explanation is I've got to make it fit with my thought of you as a rational agent. So if I'm discussing something with David and he says something that I believe to be false. So he says P and I believe not P. I'm going to think, Oh. So Davidson says the David says that the chairs are red. How can you think that? You know, he's like me. He knows the word meaning the word red. The chairs are obviously blue.

Why is he saying that? So attributing to him the belief that the chairs are red won't make sense of him to me. So I'm going to say, what do you mean, they're red? And he says, I'm just joking. OK. Now, immediately I can make sense of him again. My rationalities have to tell you. Well, people's rationalities are perverse to some extent, but actually, to the extent that they are, we're unable to understand them.

I mean, we've all met people who think in a way that's quite perverse compared to the way we think. And it's quite a lot harder to understand these people and less so. I'll perhaps explain a bit more here. Ordinary causal explanations are constrained by the principle of the uniformity of nature. What do I mean by that? Well, evidence for causal explanations is observations of correlations. Evidence against a causal explanation is observations of failure to correlate.

So if I say A causes B and then I see an A without a B, then I've got evidence against the claim that A causes B. I've not good evidence that A causes B is false. It may be that certainly is only certain these cause B. But certainly if I've gotten A's it doesn't cause a b. The statement A's cause B is false. And it's the lack of correlation. That's the evidence against it. There was something else I was going to say here, but I can't. I can't remember what it is.

I remember a minute, no doubt. OK, said the principal. The uniformity of nature, we think that causal. Relations are law governed. We think there are irregularities involved. We think there are correlations involved. So all this the principle of the uniformity of nature, the idea that nature is regular is behind. All are ordinary causal explanations. But. When we think about reasoned explanations, we appeal to a different principle.

So if I explain your behaviour by saying. Well, goodness, he's a man of a certain age. So what do you expect? I might be right. It depends what you're doing. But actually, what I should be trying to do is make you rational. So if David says something that strikes me as false, I get the chair example. It's a hard one to to follow up. But if David says something that strikes me as false, I could dismiss him as irrational.

We actually we all do that. Think of the last time somebody said to you something that's strikes you as false. And you decided not to take them up on it. That might have been a taxi driver on the way to the station or something like that. They say something and you think, you know, if that was a friend of yours, you'd take them up on it. But you're not going to take up the taxi driver or the porter at your college or things like that.

You're going to let it go. And it's also the case that you might let it go if you think that they know a lot more about the subject than you do. So you might be letting a lot of things I go say it passed without challenging me on them, possibly because you're in a lecture or something like that or because you think I know a lot more about it than you do. But again, actually your rational I'm rational if I say something that you think is false.

One of us is wrong. If it's a contradiction, Atley is if one of us says peer, one of us says not pee, then one of us is wrong. And it might not be you. It might be me. So we should we should always cheque when we see that we might if we get something that's that's actually not a contradiction. And P and Q where they don't seem to be true together, we might both be wrong. So. So think of a case where sorry, this is a silly example, but I've always been using it and it seems to work.

So a rat has been trained in a cage where, where a bell goes and he gets a food pellet. Okay. Another rats been trained in a different cage where a bell goes and he gets an electric shock. And these experiments are both finished and the rats are put in into a cage and they've become friendly. And the bell goes and one rat rushes to the food bowl and the other rat cowers in the corner and then nothing happens. And they say to each other. Why did you do that? Are you mad?

And they discover that they were both wrong, that they both had reasonable beliefs, given that the experience that they had had. But actually they were overgeneralising their beliefs. And in exactly the same way, if David and I disagree on something, we might both be wrong or I might be wrong or he might be wrong. The way to find out is to ask. And the principle of charity tells us that the evidence for irrationality in a human being is evidence of error in your interpretation.

Your way of describing that human being. So if I attribute a certain belief to you and that belief is false, I should actually think it's more likely that my interpretation is wrong. So that's that's how beliefs differ from or rather reasoned explanations differ from causal explanations.

And Davidson went on to argue that we could, as a result of this distinction between reasoned explanations and causal explanations, show that mental states are physical states, which is what we wanted all along because it solves the causation problem. I'll explain the token in a minute. So Davidson believe that the distinction between reasoned explanation and causal explanation would solve the problem of mental causation. And at the time, many philosophers thought he was right.

I mean, he was generally agreed to have solved the problem of mental causation. Whether he did or not will. Have a look in a minute. But he did so by joining to our attention what he called an inconsistent triad and a set of three beliefs which couldn't be true together, each of which seemed to be true, but which couldn't be true together. And the solution to the inconsistent triad is to see that they could be true together, but only if we understood the mental as being physical.

So let's have a look at that. So here's the inconsistent triad. The first one is all causation. Is law governed? Well, we do tend to think that, don't we? We we think I mean, we might say that the laws are probabilistic, but we are going to say that causation is law governed.

So if you look at what our evidence is for causal explanations, evidence against causal explanations, the type of explanation that a causal explanation is, the fact that it is underpinned by the principle of the uniformity of nature. That just seems to be straightforwardly true. The second in the inconsistent triad is there is psycho physical causation. Well, again, that seems to be just straightforwardly true.

So the psychological cause is the physical. When I see that the traffic light is red, I put my foot on the brake. Yes. I have said it celebrated in the past. Witness. OK. When I see the light is green, I put my foot on the accelerator. When I've got a headache. I take an aspirin. So we think that, oh, can't I eat the ice cream in it? It's makes me feel less hot. So there's causation from the psychological to the physical, and there's causation from the physical to the psychological.

But there seems to be no question that there's a psycho physical causation. Do you are you happy with both of those? Would you like to quarrel with either of those? Any of you? OK, here's the problematic one. There are no psycho physical laws. Now, do you see why this triad appears to be inconsistent? If all causation is law governed and if there is psycho physical causation, then there must be psycho physical laws.

Surely if those psycho physical laws and all causation is law governed, then there ought to be psycho physical causation that they they just seem to be. Sorry if there are no psycho physical laws and there is psycho physical causation, then how can it be the case at all? Causation is law governed okay? They just they don't see those. That seems true and that seems true. But the minute we add this to the group, we seem to have a problem. But, says Davidson. This is true, too.

And the reason this is true is because of the disparate commitments of mental predicates and physical predicates to get a law. We've got to see the two together. And if I try and get a law, Fred, cross the road because he wanted an ice cream. Well, there's no regularity there. If Fred cross the road every time he wanted an ice cream, there'd be something very wrong with Fred. Wouldn't the. If I say David did this because he wanted a glass of water or it's raining, so Sean took an umbrella.

Or it's raining. So Sean did a dance, that might be a perfectly good explanation. Sean wants it to rain today because he doesn't want to go out and he's been being forced out. And so this is a good opportunity for him not to be. But there is no regularity between Sean having that belief and performing that action with psychological states. There just doesn't appear to be the same regularity that there is with physical states.

And that, according to Davidson, is because of the disparate commitments of the psychological and the physical language. So the one that there's no psycho physical laws. That's the one for which Davidson has to argue. That's the one that is problematic. And he thinks it's because of the desperate constraints on the two types of predicate. So the principle of charity versus the principle of the uniformity of nature. If you think of the. Stupidity of trying to think of a regularity.

If you think a reasoned explanation, you appeal to somebodies. Having done this because they want this or because they believe this and then think of them doing that every time they believe this. It would just it just doesn't work. We haven't got the same regularity. So Davidson says we will never be able to formulate laws combining mental and physical states because they're not fitted for one another. The two types of predicate and laws, of course, are linguistic if we formulate a law.

A law has got to be formulated in language. Obviously. If all causation is law governed and there are no psycho physical laws, then the laws governing psycho physical causation, says Davidson, must be physical laws. And this tells us that every mental event must have a physical description. And it's in virtue of this description that it falls under a physical law. So going back to the same thing I had earlier.

We've got this event causes that event. So that's the cause and that's the effect and this has a mental description, believes P. And this has a behavioural description. And. It's in virtue of but it also has physical descriptions as well. It doesn't fall under any law under the description, believes P. But it does fall under laws under this physical description, says Davidson. And in the same way, this event here doesn't fall under laws, under the behavioural description.

But there are physical descriptions in virtue of which it falls under laws. So every mental event. Has some physical description in virtue of which it falls under a physical law. And that for many years was seen as the solution to the problem of mental causation. And it's important to recognise that Davidsons and token identity theory, not a type identity theory. So if you think back to the 40s and 50s and think back to the idea of the contingent identity, that was a type identity theory.

So the idea was that all of these are beliefs that P. So this is a cost. If you like, and these are members of the class, the belief that P and this is another class neural state. Four, seven, six, did somebody say let's call it that? And each of these as a token of the type neural state, four, seven, six. And there's a one to one relation between these. So every belief that P is a neural state, four, seven, six. Okay, that's type identity theory. Davidson's theory is not like that.

If this is the class of beliefs that p okay. Lots of different tokens of that type. What Davidsen claiming is that each one of these is a physical state. But there is no physical state type that is each one of these. If you see what I mean. So each one of these has a different physical description or can have a different physical description. So that's type identity theory. This is Tolkan identity theory. Do you see the difference? You're all looking very worried.

Let's let's make sure that we understand that before we move on, if these are only two. How come they can go under the U.N. if they don't? They don't. Not the identities they don't. I'll say something about that in a minute. So. So that might I should be able to solve that question in a minute. Any other questions about this before I look at problems for it may just be repeating Bob's question, in which case. Just tell me what differentiates the mental tokens from each other.

They are all beliefs. They all have a different physical description. Yes. They're all beliefs that p but they all have a different physical description. So just as this is the class of red things, let's say each of them might be a different type of thing. But they're all reds. So redness is what they have in common. What they these have in common is the belief that P but they don't have any physical state in common. Okay, okay, let's.

Okay, so Davidson's as a token of identity theory, not a type identity theory. And this is where I'm going to answer your question, I hope. There may be coolsaet laws relating states that are, as a matter of fact, mental with. States that are, as a matter of fact, political. So if this belief that PE causes this behaviour. Q Then this must fall under a just a physical description, which is causally related to a physical description under which this behaviour falls.

Okay, so physical description and physical description. And that will be true of every belief that P. But there isn't any. I'm just about to say that. But there aren't any bridge laws down here. So if you think of a causal law as underpinned by regularity, but a bridge law is an identity, a bridge law tells you that belief that P equals neural state four, seven, six.

And that's a bridge law between predicates. So you're saying that predicate picks out the state of a type that's identical to that predicate? So there aren't any bridge laws, but there are causal laws. That's that's the very important thing to remember, so. The cause, the laws and force are all physical, not mental. They they underpin that causal relation in virtue of a physical description. But there aren't any bridge laws. And that's why there aren't any uniformity, is there?

Okay, so Davidson's anomalous monism, he calls it, is a non reductive physicalism. It is a physicalism. It shows that all mental states are physical. But it is not reductive. It doesn't reduce mental states to physical states. The question is, can you just say that when we have mental states, our brain is working? There's something as vague as that. No, he's saying that when when a mental state court is officially called state, there is a physical description of it.

So it's not as vague as that. And it's true that what it won't do is tell you anything useful about which state to look for. But Davidson thinks the only way we'll ever identify mental states is by engaging in conversation, by using the principle of charity. So we'll never know enough about brains to be able to provide reasoned explanations of each other's behaviour. With the only way we'll find reasoned explanations is by trying to understand each other as people.

In effect. Right. Well, the argument is pretty good. Well, the argument that is not reductive, it's based on the fact that there is no possible future scientific discovery to be wrong. He doesn't know that because he's not. A theoretical neuroscientist. So the idea that it's non-productive is based on a logical argument that we owe a scientific knowledge.

Yes. Yes. Okay. If if if neuroscience ever discovers that the belief that P is identical to neural state 476 Davidson will have been proven wrong. Yep. Yep. I really don't think that's going to happen for all sorts of reasons, I'll tell you why. But let me go through this and then we'll open it to questions. Let's have a quick look. So objections were immediately brought against his claim. But let's have another look at another way of showing that mental states are Tolkan states.

So another type of non reductive physicalism. The functionalist also claims that mental states are physical states. But Heath does it by saying firstly that they are functional states. So pain is the causal role played by pain in our folk psychological theories. So we have a folk psychological theory. Pain is the state that causes us to withdraw our hand. It causes us to say, well, it causes us to avoid something in future and so on.

And any state that plays that causal role according to the functionalist, is a pain state. So pain is realised by this, the physical state that plays the causal role of pain. So whereas we have with anonymous monism, we have a mental state has a physical description with functionalism. We've got a physical description of a causal role which is played by realised by a physical state.

And the important point about functionalism is that it permits multiple realise ability, and we talked about this again in lecture four when we were talking about real essence and so on. So if a see fibre firing plays the role of pain in human beings and we say that pain is C fibre firing, we'd have to deny that dogs can be in pain. Assuming that dogs don't have C fibres. But what we can say is that pain is whatever plays the functional role that defines pain.

So it's realised by C fibre firing in human beings. D, fibre firing in dogs and something completely different in margins. And that's permitted in functionalism. So that's not a problem. So notice, again, we've got exactly the same thing. We've got a class of mental states in this case pains, and they're realised by different physical things. But here where we've allowed more, whereas with Davidson, each one could be really it could be something completely different.

Here we're allowing that these are humans and they're realised by the same state, etc. You might also have noticed that whereas Davidson talks about propositional attitudes or intentional states, functionalism tends to talk about qualitative states or experiential states. So we can appeal to either anomalous monism or functionalism to argue that mental states are physical states. And this might seem to resolve the problem of mental causation.

If mental states are physical states, why should there be a problem of mental causation? We saw right from the beginning that one of the key reasons for thinking that mental states are physical states is the idea that then we wouldn't have a problem with mental causation. So have these two. We've we've seen the problem with type identity theory, but now we've seen that we can look at two non reductive physical isms and see that we can save maybe mental causation.

But it's never that easy, is it? There are two problems that haunt both types of non-productive physicalism exclusion, which is the one you mentioned earlier, and externalism, which is one I think Bob was mentioning earlier. Let's have a look at the two of them. Okay. The exclusion problem ANSYS that argues that if causes have mental and physical properties. OK, so you're looking at one event, the cause that has both mental properties.

It's the belief that P and physical properties. And if physics is complete. So if you think that every physical effect must have a physical cause and if there's no systematic over determination, which is where you came in, David, then events that are, as a matter of fact, mental can only have their behavioural effects in virtue of their physical properties, says the exclusion property problem. So I won't be able to find where I up. OK. So the belief that PPI causes the behaviour cue.

But it does so causes the exclusion problem in virtue of its physical properties. It's not its being the belief that p that causes it to have the effect it has. It's its being neural state four seven six. That causes it to have the effect it has. That's what the exclusion problem says. Am I going to. OK. So so those who think the exclusion problem is a good problem think that the mental properties of the event are shown by it to be epiphenomenal.

So it's the physical events, physical properties of the event that do the causing and the mental properties come along for the ride. So we've still got a problem with mental causation because you believe you do what you do, because you believe what you believe. Don't you? You believe that you say what you say because you believe what you believe. It's the mental properties of your states that you think of as causing your behaviour.

But if this is right, it's not the mental properties that cause your behaviour. It's the physical properties of your mental states. No, let me finish this. Sorry. Say again. Why is that a problem for Davis? Because like it. It's not. But I'm going to say that in a minute. Okay. OK. So if you if you accept the exclusion problem, you're going to think that mental properties are epiphenomenal. So externalism. Oh, okay. So that was exclude the exclusion problem.

And I don't think it's a problem for Davidsen. And the reason it's not a problem for Davidsen is Davidsen does not believe that properties cause anything at all. So the person who believes this is somebody called Yagman Kim, actually, he and many other people believe this, but he thinks that they the relator of the causal relation are properties, whereas Davidson thinks that the relapser of the causal relation are token events.

And once you believe what Davidsen believes, this is not a problem at all. But I wasn't going to go into this in any length because we've already got an awful lot to think about. Okay. Anyone want to say anything about the exclusion problem before we go? Go on to externalism. I've got you all silenced. Bob's the only one who's got any one thing to say, and that's because he's done the philosophy of mind, caught cheating Cuban people.

This is just too bad. No, they think that they're they're a type identities between mental states and physical states. So a lot of the people who bring the exclusion problem want to go back to the type identity theory and go back to the idea that the belief that P is identical to Neuros State. Forty four, seven, six. And of course, they've got to grapple with Crikey's argument and so on and all sorts of Descartes arguments. Indeed. OK. Shall I go on to the externalism problem?

Let's do so and then we can just open things. Externalism says the six intentional states have contents. They represent the world. So you have a belief about me that I'm wearing a black and white jumper. So your belief about me represents me as wearing a black and white jumper. Is that right? Arguably, this ensures that intentional states are not the sort of states that are inside us. We tend to think of our beliefs as being inside our head, don't we?

That's partly because we think that our beliefs are brain states and our brains are inside our heads. But actually, what this would ensure is that the states of the sort that we get into, not states of the sort that get inside us. So here's the difference. This is green. Can you see it? Oh, that's because I'm standing in front of it. Okay, so here's here's the state of the sort that's inside you. And here's the state of the sort that you get into.

Okay, so if now the state of the sort that you get into isn't denying that there is something inside your head, but they're denying that that's the belief, the belief takes up. So if it's a belief that a tree. In front of me. OK. That takes into account. That's the thing that's inside your head, which is common to a hallucination. There's a tree in front of me. OK. And the tree itself, whereas the internal list thinks that it's nothing more than the state that's in your head.

So an internist, somebody like Descartes, for example, believes that the world could be completely different than it is. And yet you have the same beliefs that you have. But let me ask you a question. OK? You all have a belief about me now. Don't you imagine if I didn't exist. Could you have a belief about me?

Now, you could only all have a belief that's, you know, as if there's a lecturer in front of me and she's called Marianne and this, that and the other, you could do you could have a belief that describes me. But could you have a belief about me if I didn't exist? Put up your hand if you think. Yes. Did you ever exist? Well, I think it is. I'm not asking an epistemological question at the moment. I'm asking a metaphysical question. Could you have a belief?

Well, actually, let me ask an easier question. Could you have an X? Could you have a belief about red? Could you have a concept red? If you had never experienced anything red. You could. Put up your hand if you think you couldn't have a belief, a concept of red without experiencing something red. You couldn't. OK, I think you're right. A blind person blind from birth could have a concept of red, couldn't they?

So they could believe they could come to believe that strawberries are red pillboxes or red. Things like that. But they couldn't have a concept of red. That's like yours. I'm assuming that you aren't blind and indeed that you're not colour blind. Because to have the concept of red requires you to have experienced red. And I'm suggesting in the same way, you couldn't have a belief about me unless I existed. Well, what about Florida? You know, it should be about suppositions.

Because in the subdivision has a content, it's about something. OK, well, you can suppose something about me, you can suppose that I'm my middle names, Gene, which it isn't. Or whatever. But you can only suppose something about me because you have the concept of me. And that's surely a day rea concept. You couldn't have that concept if I didn't exist. OK. He's putting together a description and I've already said you could have.

You could create a fiction in your mind. That's a lecturer who lectures in philosophy was earings black and white jumpers. You could create such a fiction. But that fiction wouldn't be me, I think. So say you say you met somebody outside who it had created such a fiction and you were talking about me and they were talking about their fiction and. You would at some point have to say, well, all that. You know, has this person coincidentally, coincidentally, come up with.

A fiction that's exactly like Marianne AC to us is it's a thought about me. This is a concept about me. No, it's not. OK, let me ask you another one. Those of you who are married. If your wife or husband, God forbid, was spirited away tonight onto Twin Earth and they left behind them a molecule for molecule duplicate. Okay, so you wouldn't know that they'd be swapped. Would this be the person you wouldn't know, you'd have no idea. Would this be the person with whom you exchanged your vows?

How could it be so Davidson talks about swamp man if somebody comes out of the swamp and this molecule for molecule identical for you to you, they would be married to your wife. Because of the identity identity, because of the qualitative identity, I'm suggesting that you'd actually have to have numerical identity for that. OK. So you can see. Yes, and you can could you? Well, you've you've known that gas is there. You know that the air is there, even though you can't see it.

You've got the concept of invisibility and you can combine that with your concept of man and come up with the invisible man can be right here. No, you can't experience visibility, but you can. You can experience seeing something and you can use the not operator to negate it and thereby get invisible. And you know that things can have effects without there being visible. So you might be able to touch them, but you can't see them.

You might be able to hear them, but you can't see them, etc. So you do have the concept of not too visible, don't you? Not visit, I'd say not visible and invisible. Well, invisible. When we create ideas, we put together. So a unicorn. Nobody's ever experience a unicorn. But we've all experienced horses. We've all experienced horns. We can take apart the concepts and put them back together creatively. Say, you can all imagine that my shirt was yellow.

Now, and that's because you've got the concept yellow. You've got the concept of my jumper. You can take them apart and you put them back together creatively. You've got the concept of invisible. You've got the concept of man. You can put them together and you create the invisible man. Then you've got to put bunches around him, because if he remains invisible, you've got real problems. But it's quite useful when he takes them off because he can do all sorts of things.

Okay. So that's what Externalism says. Extend. This says that state beliefs are states of the sort that we get into. They're not states of the sort that inside us. And if this is the case, we've got another problem. The contents of your beliefs are a function not just of their intrinsic properties, of the properties that are inside your head, they're also a function of their relations to the environments, to the history, to your society, to your culture, and indeed to your community.

So your beliefs about me are partly a function of your relation with me, the fact you've seen me, you've met me. Talk to me, listens to me, et cetera. And so you could not have the belief that you actually have without your being located as you are actually located in the world as it is. But if contents are X, essentially extrinsic properties. It's such an important word, I put it in twice. Then again, we have a causal problem.

And surely it's only intrinsic properties that can be causally implicated in the production of behaviour. So imagine a vending machine if I put a UPS. If I put a. Ten pence piece of white yard need a pound, wouldn't I? So if I put a pound in it, I'd get one of these fattening things here.

But if I put it into it, something that had all the intrinsic properties of a pound, the right weight, the right shape, the right thickness, the right everything else, I'd still be able to get one of those fat things, wouldn't I? What's missing is that it's not a pound coin. It doesn't have the right history. It wasn't issued by I didn't know what the history of pound coins is, but I'm sure there is one. It doesn't play the same role in our economy as the pound coin does.

But the vending machine doesn't care. The vending machine works only on the intrinsic properties of the things that are put into it. And aren't you exactly the same? So if you have inside your head something with exactly the same intrinsic properties. Isn't that going to cause you to do exactly the same as it would do if it had different extrinsic properties? Goes the sort extrinsic properties. How can content, if it's essentially external, make a difference of any kind to our behaviour?

Goes this objection. So there are numerous. So what I've done is I've looked initially at the knee jerk theory of mind, which is the type identity theory, and shown that actually we went away from that pretty quickly. It looked as if mental states and physical states must be different things. But then we looked at two theories that says no, actually, despite appearances, they are in fact the same thing. You've just got to be non-productive, physicalist, not reductive physic lists.

So two theories that say mental states, all physical states, and therefore we don't have a problem with causation. Then I've looked at two problems. Two to this, the exclusion problem and the externalism problem, both of which suggests that, OK. You're saying that mental. There are states that have both mental and physical properties. So the mind is the brain. But mental states are not physical states because they they have different properties.

But actually, now you've got the problem again, all over the sorry problem all over again at the level of properties. Don't physical properties exclude mental properties? Don't extrinsic properties get excluded by intrinsic properties? How can the mental be a cause of anything given that it's external list or given that it's not reducible to a physical property? Well, there are not numerous possible responses to both these problems, and I've put references in the handout.

But let's consider what would be the case if we can't solve these problems and the others. Okay. So there are two possibilities. Firstly, we'd have to say that the mental is epiphenomenal. It only appears to you that you do what you do because you believe what you believe. It actually cannot be the case. Your push around the world, not by your mental states, but by your brain states and your brain states are not the same thing as your mental states.

The other one is that we can get rid the holth. Darn thing. Why not just eliminate mental states? So the eliminating gists think that we could have reason to think that we never act for reasons that we should believe that we do not have beliefs. And believe me, it's not as daft as it sounds. Actually, the arguments for illuminative ism are all pretty damn good. And they start off by saying that folk psychology is a theory.

We postulate beliefs in explanation of our behaviour and because it's a theory, it can be false. And of course, any theory that's false. We've got to get rid of all its postulates as well. So just as we got rid of phlogiston, when we got rid of that theory of how to explain things, so we should get rid of beliefs when we understand better, how to explain our own behaviour.

So, oh, here we are. Okay. I promise you, the illuminative isn't not as daft as they may sound, but you'll have to look at that yourself. Okay. So can we explain how reasons are causes consistently with reasons being physical? If not, we're going to have to be duellists and believe that the mental is not physical. And lots of people have problems with that. If we're dualists, we have to reject the idea that physics is complete.

So they've got to be physical causal processes that pop out of the physical and pop in again. You can see why people didn't like being dualists. So that's it. We've only got five minutes left. But you can see why mental causation is a huge problem and there are many, many people working on it and they're working and all sorts of different directions. It's a very big problem. We have got five minutes to talk. Let's talk. Let me get some questions from behind. If there are any. No.

Compared to just going back to. Observations from science as well. Things like the fact that things happen before you think you can live it. Yeah. Well, Libit, you had a number of experiments in the 1980's originally, but he's got a book out in 2004 which is on the handout. When you get it. But he argued that he had shown that action potentials, which are not conscious, occur so many microseconds before consciousness does, and that therefore he shows that there's no free will, he claimed.

And a philosopher called Melley. Alfred Melley has. Has. I think debunked that claim quite categorically. I mean, if you're going to say that we've shown that your intention only comes up after the action potential has started. You've got to be damned sure that you know what you mean by intention. And you've got to be damn sure, you know what you mean by belief and desire and so on. And Mellie, unfortunately, hasn't looked at those things. But but have a look.

I could have gone into that. In fact, I've got a podcast about that. A new if I'm I must be able to find it somewhere. If you want to know more about. OK. Any other questions? If not, I'll have to ask. Oh, yes. Gone. Yes, well, I mentioned it when. The exclusion problem is only a problem for somebody who thinks that properties are mentally efficacious. And I mentioned that Davidson denies that he thinks this is only token events that mentally efficacious.

And I agree with Davidson, so I don't think the exclusion problem is a problem at all for Davidson. And that that's one direction. But it's not a very common direction to go in. I think there is again, there's somebody on the reading list who's who's looking the same sort of direction. Was there someone else? Ontake is like, oh, did you ever. Go back to Fred and the ice cream. If Fred wants an ice cream, it's obviously not the case that he would always cross the road to the ice cream.

But isn't that just like anything else in the in the non human world? Just because there's an earthquake doesn't mean that house. Well, yes, but but because the that the laws which govern human behaviour are likely to be very, very, very complicated. Just as they are. Yup, yup, yup, you're absolutely right. Well, when we were looking at you, when we were looking at causation, we noticed that actually there are very seldom regularities.

I mean, you can strike the match and the match doesn't light because there's not no oxygen around. You didn't strike your hard enough, etc. So a cause there's got to be a number of different conditions that together are sufficient. Even so, in the non mental world, we find those conditions often correlated often enough that we see regularities in human behaviour. When we talk you up, we see it. I mean, Davidsen doesn't think that qualitative states are in fact, mental.

He thinks that only intentional states are mental. And if you think about my belief that it's raining. What's the characteristic effect of my belief that it's raining? Surely there's no such thing. It's going to depend on whether I'm going out, whether it's my wedding day, whether I whether it's this, that or the other. We'd have to write in so many different conditions that we would get a logical entailment.

Which is why people originally thought. The reasons aren't causes same for any physical. No. Well, because I was going to say perhaps fewer. Actually, it's quite significantly fewer, isn't it? Is such a complicated thing. Well. And Davidson thinks that because the brain is such a very complicated thing. And what's more, beliefs and so on are externally individuated states. And the only way I'm ever going to explain your rational behaviour is by using the principle of charity.

So he's not denying that there is a physical explanation of what you do. And it's going to be an extremely complicated one. But if I actually want to explain what you're doing, I'm much better off using charity. I'm much better off assuming that your rational and trying to work out what I would be doing if I were in your position. But aren't you assuming I'm rational? Because. Everything you've experienced in your life to date is evidence for human beings being basically rational.

Yes. So isn't that just the same as you know? Because there's no there's. It's not. Well, I see what I mean. Yes. Well, no one's denying that your. I mean, you're an object as well when I see an object like you. I'm going to assume that you have reason I might be wrong. I might be. You might be a madam, too. So it's waxwork or something like that.

Or a Martian or a Martian. But actually, if I've interacted with you over any length of time, my belief that your rational is probably going to be borne out by your behaviour because you act rationally. Yes, the same thing. My interactive with my toilet. Well, if I say he's a man of a certain age, you know, he's going to be doing this, that and the other, you're going to get quite annoyed with me. Right. Sometimes I would be right. Yes, sometimes I would be right.

But I mean, I do a nice little thought experiment. Actually, we have got really time to talk about it. But the thought experiment, imagine that one day we found out so much about brains that we needn't any longer engage in discussion and communication with each other. And I could carry my little app, which would tell me what you're going to do, because it would tell me the laws that are governing your brain, the initial state that your brains and what your brain is about to do.

That would be a very different way of explaining your behaviour than what I am actually doing, which is looking into your eyes and using empathy quite often to think. Does he understand? Does she understand? Is she looking puzzled? Might if I explain it this way, is it going to make it easier, et cetera? Davidson thinks that's a whole different kettle of fish doing away with free will. If I did what you have knock on. Oh, yes. Well.

Well, determinism. I mean the. I thought I was going to mention determinism, but I haven't actually. But actually Decem illuminative ism is determinism illuminative ISM is basically saying that what we are is is determined by our brain states. If I had an app, it would indeed mean that. And actually the ramifications of determinism are huge. It means there is no content. There is no meaning, because if there are no beliefs, there are no there's no truth.

There's no meaning. There's no content. It doesn't mean the world's any different from. It is. I mean, it's if it is like that. It is like that. Now. But we're just deluded into thinking that there's meaning and truth and etc., right, with that happy thought. That's the end. I also I there are a couple of things I'm going to be giving some lectures. Is my Twitter feed my Facebook. Do come and join me on Twitter and Facebook if you can.

My Web sites there as well. And I'm giving some lectures on an introduction to metaphysics in April. So when the weather's slightly better, I've got some leaflets here. Do pick some up as you pick up the handouts. And I hope I'll see you there.